[telaelit]

I'm so confused because if I understand correctly the employees of the company were not given board positions or any sort of ownership over the means of production, which would be socialism. We live in a capitalist economic system, and using the tools that capitalism provides the government stepped in using capitalist tools to fix the problem. This isn't socialism, this is capitalism protecting itself from failing.

[DubiousPusher]

FDIC insurance is mandatory. It is not a "market" product.

They are asking for an extraordinary extension of this program to recover losses incured by bad market behavior.

[adra]

I think you're generally trying to refer to communism where everyone's the generally assumed to be equally "owning" a thing, so if we all own it, anyone can be the boss.

Socialization is often the act of governments taking responsibility or ownership of production in order to satisfy the needs of the greater populace.

Although the general act is similar, materially they are very different. The bank was a for profit entity made to put money in the pockets of their owners. It failed. If you let the thing fail in capitalism, the losses incurred are put upon the limited liability owners until their investment is zero, then the money is gone, forever. Nobody gets a dime. That's capitalism. If depositors paid for insurance above 250k and ended up reaping those insurance wins, THAT is capitalism.

Inversely, if a (quasi) government agency swoops in to bail out said failing business, it's "socializing" the liabilities left by the company. This is why you often hear the bailout credo, "private profits, socialized losses". The losses that would be incurred are paid directly or indirectly by the entire population. In this case there's a one-degree of separation extra from the federal government bailing out the depositors, vs. the federal reserve. The net outcome is that a bank that acts poorly and loses a bunch of their customers money can expect governments to prop up their mistakes. So fuck it, live fast and break shit because gov'ment going to bail me out!